Everybody walk the dinosaur

Remember the scene in Jurassic Park when the velociraptors are chasing the stupid kids around in that giant kitchen and one of the dinos jumped up on the big metal table?  Me neither.  When we got to the auto mechanic place there were a couple dinosaurs checking it out.  One of them was walking around very gingerly on the counter like it was going to start operating the cash register.   

It wasn’t scary, it was adorable.  These dinos were the size of turkeys and they had deluxe orange and red and blue feathers.  I know that I said before feathers on dinosaurs are stupid but these ones were magnificent.  They hissed at us like cats when they saw us and then when we weren’t afraid of them they scampered off like squirrels.  They’d make cool pets if not for that giant claw on their feet. That would scratch up your floors.  I wonder if you can train a dinosaur to use the bathroom. 

The lying paleontologists are always going on and on about how smart these little dinos with the arms were and how they could do complex math and drive buses.  I barely believe they know what dinosaurs looked like, how on earth could they know how smart/dumb they were or how they behaved?  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, being a paleontologist is the best job in the world.  You can make up whatever you want.  There’s no way to know.   

When we came upon the facility I had a question – how did Catcher and all the friends he left to die dig the place out so well?  Did they have a backhoe?   

A preacher was asked by a funeral director to hold a burial service at a small local cemetery for a person who had died with no friends or family to mourn them.  The preacher said of course, but when he set out he got lost on the way to gravesite.  Eventually he found the backhoe and its crew. 

 
The preacher jumped out of his car and rushed over to the open grave.  Feeling terrible on account of being late he gave an impassioned and l lengthy speech, sending the deceased off to the great beyond in style. 
 

 
Once he was done and heading back to his car, he heard one of the workmen say “I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years and I never seen anything like that before.” 

Ba-dum-dum, don’t forget to tip your waitress. 

My second question was how was the place still intact to be dug out anyway?  The Canadian Stasis Hole still being around makes sense, it was designed and built underground to hold all the human popsicles through a nuclear war.  That place was still ninety percent wrecked.  How could Uncle Tony’s crappy rural auto mechanic shop survive being buried in such good condition?  Mudslide?  When the lying archeologists dig up an old Celtic hut or something how did it get down there?  How does a building get buried without being smashed to bits in the process?   

On the approach we saw some Blair Witch style things made of grass and teeth and fur and whatnot arrayed in a semi-circle around the bodies of Catcher’s very dead friends.  They were skinned and staked to the ground, the dead people not the dolls.  I’m going to do way out on a limb and suggest that’s a warning not to hang around this place.  As we set to hanging around the place Martialla and the two Lady Jesus people went to start working on the legendary car.  It’s already been Mad Maxified so I guess it was in service until it ran out of gas and no one bothered to convert it to run on bio-sludge.   

Lucien was sort of helping but he was mostly just watching.  I don’t think he’s doing well.  Although if you want to be a half glass full kind of person he’s doing great for someone who got shot through the belly and received absolutely no medical care.   

That left Paul and I to be on the lookout for marauding plainspeople.  I figured Paul would be fine looking out on his own so I poked around inside.  There wasn’t much to find.  I got excited for a minute because I spotted a Jim Beam bottle but it was dry as a bone.  Does alcohol evaporate?  Aren’t there bottles of wine that are hundreds of years old?  The only other interesting thing was a bunch of old Atlases that weren’t rotted away.  Not that interesting in itself, but someone had gone through a lot of trouble to bleach them out so they could write on them.   

I dragged what was left of a chair out front and piled enough prairie grass (tall or short grass, no one knows!) on it that sitting down was merely horribly uncomfortable and took a breather to peruse my reading material. 

“Hey Mar, there’s a bunch of old wheels in there with little bits of rubber on them.  I don’t get it.  I thought the problem with tires was they last forever.  What happened to all the tires?” She pretended like she couldn’t hear me and said nothing back.  “Typical” I said to Paul “Do you know what happened to all the rubber Paul?  And speaking of rubber, are you and Martialla being careful?  The last thing I need is her getting preggers on me with your mutant apocalypse baby.  Speaking of, the way people kill each other in the futre here how is there anyone left?  Is everyone just scoring around the clock and the women are constantly cranking out mutant babies?” 

Paul turned to face me with a look on his face like his nuts were in a vice “Uh . . .” 

I waved him off with a laugh “Don’t worry about it Paul, just keep a look out for those furry people.” 

Martialla’s voice came clomping at me self-righteously “You’re both supposed to be watching” 

“I knew you could hear me!  Why am I always the one getting stuck on guard duty?” 

“Because you’re useless for anything else!” 

I nodded at Paul “That’s true.”